The Supervisors Retreat

The Supervisors Retreat June 14, 2007

Background: At the May 15 Supervisors meeting, a motion was made for the Supervisors to go on a Retreat so that they could discuss the Comprehensive Plan in detail, and make any necessary changes. At that time, the Board had before it a motion from the Planning Commission to end debate on the flood plain ordinance until there were specific maps from FEMA. With 70 + people in the audience at Stanley Elementary School, and many citizen objections to the Comprehensive Plan, particularly the line that said “prohibit buildings and businesses in the 100 year floodplain”, the Board decided to postpone action on that motion until after dealing with the Comprehensive Plan. The Retreat was scheduled for June 14 at Skyland.

Attendees: In attendance were the five supervisors, plus Dr. Tom Cardman (Economic Development), Mr. Mark Belton (County Administrator), Ms. Regina Miller (Executive Assistant to the Board), Mr. Kevin Henry (County Planner).

Members of the audience were Mike Trader, Jean Trader, Jim Turner, Carl Turner, Alice Richmond, Steve Hunsicker, Natalie Zuckerman, and Jamie Turner (Page News and Courier). The audience (Page County Watch) brought two professional level videocameras and set them up in the room, in consideration of the many people who wanted to attend but were unable to because of the date and time of the meeting.

The Room: The Mountain Room at Skyland held a conference table, and a side table filled with coffeee, juices, and breakfast pastries. There was plenty of seating available for the public.

The Agenda: The agenda allowed 1 ½ hours for discussion of the Comprehensive Plan, followed by a break, followed by an hour for discussion of the school construction, followed by lunch, followed by a discussion of the county office building. The meeting was scheduled to be over by 2 p.m.

What actually happened: Mr. LaFrance opened the meeting. He expressed his dismay that the public and the press chose to come, and to bring videocameras. He said that the Supervisors are not allowed by law to talk among themselves about county business, and so when they set up a Retreat, it is with the hope that this will give them an opportunity to really hammer things out with some privacy. However, he said, this was a public meeting and if that is what we chose to do, then we had the right to do it. He noted that the juice, coffee, and pastries were for the Supervisors only, not the public.

The discussion about the Comprehensive Plan began. Each Supervisor had with them a copy of the changes that were made to the Plan, showing the markups. However, the discussion was subdued. Mr. LaFrance said he thought the objections of the citizens could be addressed if Mr. Henry would take his electronic copy of the plan and do a “find and replace” of the word PROHIBIT, replaced with the word REGULATE. He said that the word Prohibit was profusely scattered throughout the plan, and that as a result, it appeared to give the Planning Commission guidance to write ordinances that were restrictive to a fault, aka the flood plain ordinance. He said that changing that word would seem to essentially address the citizen objections. For example, instead of saying “Prohibit buildings and businesses in the 100 year flood plain”, the plan would now say “Regulate buildings and businesses in the 100 year flood plain” There was general agreement that this would be a good thing. The Supervisors were then asked to give any other changes to the specifics of the plan that they would like to see to Mr. Henry by June 28. He would then print out the corrected pages of the Plan, and they would review them in the work session on July 3. Mr. Belton pointed out that they would not need another public hearing, because the public hearing was held on May 15. However, Mr. LaFrance thought it would be a good thing to hold informational meetings about the Plan, district by district. That is, each Supervisor in their district would set up a citizens meeting, for their district residents only, to openly talk about the plan Supervisor to citizens.

Mr. Rust (Supervisor District 2) said he was eager to get this plan approved so that they could get on with the business of the Zoning Ordinance rewrite. He said they had spoken to someone at Virginia Tech (I may have that wrong, it may have been a state agency) and they had a project whereby for no or minimal cost they would come out and speak to the citizens in groups about the reasons and the needs for zoning ordinance changes. He thought this would be a good thing, to help the citizens understand why certain things had to be done.

Mr. Cubbage, Ms. Strickler, and Mr. Hoke made a few comments each, but none that I wrote down in my notes.

They then decided that the plan to move forward would be for Mr. Henry to make the Prohibit to Regulate change, and for each Supervisor to give Mr. Henry any other changes they would like to make privately, and the changes to be reviewed in the July 3 worksession.

After one hour, the meeting about the Comprehensive Plan was over.

Then they took a half hour break. Then they talked about the school construction bids. Then they talked about the county office building. At 11: 45 a.m. the meeting was over and they went to lunch. Before breaking for lunch, Mr. LaFrance addressed the audience regarding the flood plain ordinance. He said, while the cameras were still rolling, “The draft flood plain ordinance died when the planning commission failed to act on it after 90 days, and the Board of Supervisors has no action before it to respond to anything or do anything regarding the flood plain ordinance.”

After the meeting, after the cameras were turned off, we, in a group, asked Mr. LaFrance to further explain his statement about the flood plain ordinance. We asked, “what about the motion that was before you, and what about the statement by Mr. Hoke that you were postponing action on that motion until after the Comprehensive Plan was dealt with”. Mr. LaFrance said they didn’t act on that motion so that it would die, and it was dead.

We asked him if we could now tell all the real estate agents and everyone that absolutely, it was dead, and he said yes, it is dead. He said if the Planning Commission were to rewrite a new one, it would be starting over, and it would have to go through the entire process all over again, but the Board has not asked them to write a new one or to rethink any old ones. It is dead.

And that’s what happened at the Supervisor’s Retreat. If you would like to Blog about this, push the Comments button.